Words: Sydney Pizza // Photos: Ed Amador
Zap Skimboards lovers, we missed you guys! We are coming at you with the start of the Right back into the swing of the skim season, another bright and beautiful sunny day in Melaque to get the first finals day of the 2026 skim season going! Sunday was less cloudy than Saturday, a little warmer and the waves a little smaller than on Saturday, with a solid 3’-5’ set coming through every three to five minutes it was still a great finals day. The morning started off with the Pro Men and Pro Women finals and semi-finals.
Coming to defend her title as champion of the 2025 Melaque Skim Magia contest, Sydney Pizza was in town and ripped competing against local Leonela Sanchez. From frontside rail grab bashes, to 360 shuv-its on the lip, Syd killed it and succeeded in defending her title!
Moving straight into the Pro Men, Elian Juarez and Yahir Valencia duked it out with conditions pretty perfect for their styles. Going back and forth between waves, with great exchanges of 360 shuv-its, spins and 540 shuv-its on the way out, and both frontside and backside air re-entries back up the beach, Yahir edged out Elian by 0.9 to move on to the final! Meaning Yahir was onto the final with Dane Cameron, and Elian was onto the 3 rd and 4 th final with fellow team rider, Emilio Zepol.
Just in time for the final the waves turned on and the sets came rolling! Yahir gave everything he had from 360 and 540 shuv-its on the way out and huge air re-entries back up the beach, carving 360 backside turns, to shuv-its down the face of the wave, earning himself an incredible final heat total of 25.54. Elian finished the weekend with a cherry on top 3rd place, Emilio Zepol in a well-earned 4th place, upcoming pro, Oliver Brambila in 5th place, and to round out 6th place, fan favorite Mason Broussard! The boys killed it all weekend, great job!
With all that excitement it felt like the day was just about over, but luckily for us, we still had so much more action to see! Right after, we moved into the Semi-Pro, Masters, Jr. Men and Mens semi-finals. Including Nico Traykovski using his surf style to make it all the way to the Men's final for a 3rd place finish! Way to go man! Evan Rubin also had a great weekend, for the first time in Melaque he finished the weekend with a 2nd place finish in the Masters division even with a bum hamstring, great job man! After that, the day continued with finals of every division where writing about the local talent doesn’t do it justice. From the Mini Boys and Mini Girls where we saw some great growth of the sport and for the first time in contest history, we had at least one girl in each female division!